Country Images Magazine North Edition September 2017 | Page 27

Antiques
was of American origin, as evinced by the ® mark, despite being a British
product, so that made it slightly out of the ordinary and was a good price
all in all.
Yet when the chips are down condition is everything, because most
collectors want to put them up on their walls, and masses of rust and
corrosion diminish their attractiveness, however old or rare the sign. Really
old (mid-late 19 th century) signs in good condition command a premium,
and size (surface area) also tends to push the price up.
Enamel street signs were introduced at the end of the 1850s thanks to a
Brummie called Benjamin Baugh picking up from Germany the technique
of enamelling on cast iron sheet, refi ning and patenting it. His earliest
product went to Railway termini, and he later founded the Patent Enamel
Co. Ltd. at Selly Oak.
Th e heyday of the enamel sign was from the 1890s until the Great War.
By 1939 their use was diminishing, and the shortage of iron/steel during
and for long aft er the Second War sounded their death knell, along with
superior printing techniques allowing them to be replaced by printed
plastic and signs of other compositional materials.
Th ey were mostly used in connection with transport, too – solid tyred
’buses, stations, tramcars, garages, vending machines and so on. Changes
to transport generally also infl uenced their future, although the neglect
into which the railway network gradually fell aft er nationalisation generally
allowed thousands of signs to survive where in a previous era they would
have been removed and replaced or discarded.
Today they can still be discovered in situ if you are a very assiduous hunter,
but local auctions fairs and dealers ten